Housebroken (4 page)

“So did you come for me or the dog?” asked the woman.

“What did I do?” asked the man. “Why are you angry?” When he saw the dog running up and down the hallway with the bone in his mouth, he whistled and the dog dropped the bone and jumped into his lap.

“I don't want him on the sofa,” said the woman. “Put him down.”

“Why not?” said the man and scratched the dog's belly. “He's not hairy.”

“He might have ticks,” said the woman. “And anyway, he has to have some limits. If he doesn't learn them now, there'll be no stopping him. He has to be trained.”

“So it sounds like you've decided to keep him,” said the man.

“I haven't decided anything. He's a difficult dog.”

“So are you going to tell me what I've done?” asked the man. “Was I wrong to bring stuff for the dog? Is that what made you angry?”

“Why
did
you bring all that stuff?” asked the woman. “What do you care? This morning you wanted to throw him out.”

“Me?” shouted the man. “
I
wanted to throw him out?”

“Yes. You wanted to leave him in a field somewhere. Or in the street, where he'd get run over or caught by the city dogcatchers. If I hadn't kept him here he might be dead by now. Such a little dog. He'd have died! I don't understand why you didn't bother to call before you came.”

“Because I don't have your number.”

“You don't have my number?”

“No. You called me. Remember?”

“Yes,” said the woman and put out her cigarette. He was right. She'd called him. She was the one who'd made the mistake of calling him in the first place.

“You smoke a lot,” said the man. “You smoke twice as much as me.”

“That's because I'm nervous,” said the woman. “I'm twice as nervous as you.”

“Why?” asked the man and tried to embrace her, but the woman stood up, took the ashtray and the cigarettes and matches, and went to the kitchen. The dog, who remembered the kitchen as a happy place, ran after her.

“I'll tell you why,” she shouted to the man from the kitchen as the dog sat down next to the fridge. “Because you behaved like an animal. I asked if you wanted to keep in touch and you couldn't bring yourself to say yes.”

“What did I say?” asked the man, standing in the kitchen doorway looking at her. “I don't remember.”

“You said, ‘We'll see. I don't know,'” said the woman in a mocking tone.

“But I didn't say no.”

“So you
do
remember.”

“I don't remember saying that I didn't want to go on seeing you. That's what I remember.”

“So why did you have to say ‘We'll see. I don't know,' if you knew that you did want to?”

The man bent down to pat the dog and said that he didn't understand what she was talking about. The truth was, he thought, that he didn't know whether he'd wanted to see her. He'd just come. “Has he eaten today?” he said, pointing to the dog's plate lying upside down next to the porch door.

“No,” said the woman. “I forgot to feed him.”

“So should I give him some of the biscuits? Should I put them in the new bowl?” asked the man.

“Do what you like,” said the woman and she emptied the ashtray into the garbage can and watched the cigarette stubs sinking into the remains of the spaghetti she had eaten for lunch yesterday. Then she washed the ashtray thoroughly and put it on the drying rack. “You can do whatever you like,” she said. “He's your dog just as much as mine.”

The dog received a bowlful of special biscuits for puppies. Then the man and the woman got ready to go out to a restaurant. The man said: “I'm sorry if there was a misunderstanding. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I didn't mean to.” And when the woman looked at him suspiciously, he stroked her cheek and said: “I really don't remember what I said this morning,” and the woman said: “Never mind. I don't know why I jumped on you. I had a bad day. The dog was really annoying. I don't know what I'm going to do.”

“You'll have to train him,” said the man.

“If I decide to keep him.”

The man said: “You'd better make up your mind.”

The woman said: “I know nothing about training a dog.”

And the man said: “I'll show you.”

Then they argued about what restaurant to go to. The man said: “It's my treat,” and the woman said: “But you paid yesterday, today it's my treat.” He embraced her and said: “You're a sucker—that was just coffee. You didn't even have any cake. Why didn't you have anything?”

“Because I was too nervous,” said the woman.

“You didn't miss anything,” he said. “The cake was disgusting.”

The woman said: “Yes, I could see you were suffering.”

The man said: “But it looked good in the window.”

The woman said: “Yes, it did.”

She went into the bedroom to get dressed and asked the man to take the dog for a walk. “He's been in the house all day,” she said, “and he peed on the bathroom floor.” But she said it without anger; she even sounded pleased. The man put the collar around the dog's neck, but the collar was too big, and he asked the woman if she had something with a sharp point he could use to make a hole. The woman, who was in a better mood now, shouted from the bedroom: “Next to the stove, in the top drawer on the left, there's a pair of scissors.” The man found the scissors, took the collar off the dog's neck, placed it on the kitchen table, pierced it with the point of the scissors, turned it around, picked up the collar, and, looking at it, said: “Come here. Let's try it on.”

The dog had begun to understand the man's language. He came up to him, dropping the toy bone, which had started to lose its appeal.

“Perfect,” the man said to the dog and he attached the leash to the collar. “We're off,” he said to the woman. “Wear something sexy.”

The woman stood in her panties in front of the long mirror on the closet door. She noticed a red scratch on her stomach and didn't know if it was from the man or the dog, but she preferred to think it was from the man. The black dress she had worn yesterday was lying on the floor. She thought of the puppy and picked it up in alarm. She spread the dress out on the bed and turned the reading lamp toward it to examine it closely, but the dog seemed to have spared it. In any case, she couldn't wear the same thing tonight. She surveyed the closet, searching for something sexy, but she couldn't find anything—she had used up her one sexy dress. Then she considered whether the man was being serious when he said: “Wear something sexy.”

9

The man and the dog went down to the street. The collar felt tight around the dog's neck, but he was so happy to be going for a walk that he kept running on ahead. The man was suddenly seized by anxiety. All day he'd wondered whether to see the woman this evening or wait a few days to make the rules clear or not see her at all and be cold on the phone if she called. He didn't know where he stood on the issue. He had been on so many blind dates in the past year he was afraid his improved dating skills had impaired his ability to discriminate.

The date with the woman had been arranged by a friend who he'd first met on a blind date. They had gone out for two months, he had sometimes slept at her place, and they had talked long into the night. He told her everything he knew about himself. She told him about her past, her ex-boyfriends, the hopelessness of the present, her hunger for a relationship, and he nodded in silent agreement. He broke up with her, but he asked if they could stay friends. She was important to him, he said, and he didn't want to lose her. And she said: I don't want to lose you either.

Afterward she started arranging blind dates for him with her friends and the friends of her friends, not sure what she enjoyed more: seeing him reject them or them reject him. She always had to hear the story from both parties, and she always pretended to take his side, because she wanted him to go on dating her girlfriends, breaking up with them, and telling her all about it on her balcony at night. But most of all she wanted him to sleep over, worn out by talking.

This time he'd decided to be passive. He'd said to his matchmaking friend: I'm not calling anyone. If they want to call me, fine. I won't say no. She said: I gave your number to the friend of a friend. I saw her on the street once and she looks okay.

He felt so passive he didn't even ask what she looked like and how old she was and what she did. The woman called that afternoon. She had a pleasant voice. He didn't notice any signs of nervousness. She told him she was a translator, working from home, it didn't bring in a lot of money but she managed to make ends meet; she was thirty, and this was the first time she'd taken the initiative and called someone for a blind date. He asked her whether she was generally shy and she said yes, but if she'd been really shy, she said, she wouldn't have answered his question. The man thought: She sounds clever. The woman asked if it bothered him that she'd called. He said no, on the contrary, and they arranged to meet that evening in a café much favored for blind dates, because it was noisy and there was no possibility of privacy. When he got dressed for the date, hesitating between comfortable old jeans and a new pair that he hadn't worn before and were a little tight, he remembered that he'd forgotten to ask how he would recognize her.

He came fifteen minutes late, having deliberately ignored a few good parking spots so as not to arrive on time. He wanted to punish the woman for taking the initiative and calling him. By the time he decided to park he couldn't find a spot and had to leave his car in an expensive parking lot. Nevertheless, as he walked to the café he felt pleased with himself.

The woman was waiting at a table for two, which was placed between two larger tables, where four couples were sitting. His date looked lost at her table. Usually he was the one waiting for the stranger he'd called, who'd arrive late on purpose, apologizing and checking him out before she sat down on the other side of the table he had chosen after much hesitation. When he saw the woman hemmed in by the two large tables, smoking and darting nervous glances at the door, he saw himself in a new and touching light. He felt a rush of affection for the woman waiting at the table. He hoped she was his date.

He went up to her and introduced himself and they shook hands. Her hand was small and cold. She asked if the noise and the crowds bothered him, if he wanted to go somewhere else. He said it was up to her. She said: I don't know. What do you think? And he said they should stay where they were, he didn't have the energy to look for another parking spot.

She was short and thin with shoulder-length straight black hair. She had beautiful eyes and lips and a charming, almost imperceptible little scar under her chin. He asked her right away how she'd gotten it, which seemed a good way to break the ice. She smiled and said: I fell off a swing when I was a little girl. She asked whether he had any scars and he said that he had a big, ugly one on his knee, from a piece of broken glass when he once fell off a seesaw. She said: It's either swings or seesaws.

He thought of a little girl with black hair on a swing. He liked the idea. She didn't look really grown-up even now—her slight build, her smile, and the little scar made her seem childlike, someone he wanted to save from falling off a swing, and also to go to bed with.

In the morning, after he'd left, his conscience bothered him. He shouldn't have said that he didn't know if he'd come back. He should have at least given her a yes or a no. It was the maybe that drove them crazy, he knew, but still he never managed to stop himself. And she was actually okay, this woman. They'd had an enjoyable evening. Most of the time she listened. She seemed interested and asked questions, good questions—the kind that showed real curiosity—and he answered willingly. He remembered that he'd hardly asked her about herself and he felt a little guilty. He'd been inconsiderate. On the other hand, she'd said that she was shy. Really shy people were grateful when someone else talked. This increased his desire for her. In the afternoon he decided not to see her again because she'd broken one of his rules: she'd asked if he wanted to keep in touch. She's dependent, he said to himself. Or else she doesn't know how to play the game. On the other hand, she might be playing a different game, one he wasn't familiar with. The possibility would never have occurred to him two or three years ago, even a year ago, when he was more sure of himself and less lonely.

He had never had a relationship that lasted more than two or three months, and they had always revolved around negotiations about when they would see each other again. The negotiations were tedious and predictable, and he always won, because he was the one who said when they were over.

He was thirty-three and he was tired of his own rules, games, and negotiations. They were fine in themselves, as rules, games, and negotiations—this is what his matchmaking friend, who admired everything he did, always said—but most of his friends were already married and living by different rules and having different negotiations, which seemed a lot more important than his, and they were playing with their children.

The man was so lost in thought that he didn't notice the distress of the little puppy, who began coughing and choking but who went on running ahead, refusing to let the tightness of his collar spoil the joy of his freedom. The man stopped and bent down and opened the buckle of the collar. Since there was no hole in a more suitable place, he decided to let the dog loose and see if he would run away. The dog stayed with him. Although there had been one terrible moment of uncertainty that afternoon, when the woman had chased him and tried to kick him, he had already forgotten it. He had a short memory and he wanted a home.